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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27326596">The Haunting of the Prince</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/everylemon/pseuds/everylemon'>everylemon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Young Noctis Lucis Caelum, ghost story</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:35:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>949</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27326596</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/everylemon/pseuds/everylemon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, there was a young prince with magic in his veins who came very close to Death.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Haunting of the Prince</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this in a Halloween mood last night. Hope you enjoy if you need a bit more spookiness!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Once upon a time, there was a young prince with magic in his veins who came very close to Death.</p><p>Though he returned to Life, he had spent so long teetering on the edge that the spirits caught in between the realms became visible to him, in the odd way that such spirits choose to reveal themselves.</p><p>When he closed his eyes, his mind replayed memories of the night that had almost claimed his life: the broken bodies of those who protected him, the blood on the asphalt, the human face of the serpentine monster.</p><p>But when he opened them, he saw . . . other things.</p><p>A figure at the end of a corridor who disappeared as soon as the boy looked back.</p><p>Dark handprints circling the elegant neck on a painting of a long-gone Queen.</p><p>A flutter of curtains in his bedroom at night, as if someone had just stepped out from behind them.</p><p>To make matters worse, the boy could no longer walk. All day long, those who cared for him loomed over him with pity in their eyes, or else frowned with worry when they thought he was not looking.</p><p>In his mind, he called them the Worried Faces.</p><p>Even when they stretched his body and coaxed him to stand and worked at his wounds -- when the pain was so great that it finally pushed both his own memories and those of the Dead from his mind -- they loomed and kept him from losing himself to the pain.</p><p>If he called out in the night, it was the Worried Faces who would come running. So instead, he clung to a watchful wakefulness, trembling under the down of the covers until morning. </p><p>Once, his only friend had come to sit and read to him. The Dead had not dared come near then, only the memories of sightless eyes and torn-apart bodies of those who had also loved him. The Worried Faces tried to reassure him: those people had died protecting him because they loved him; he would always be protected. </p><p>So the boy sent his friend — who was older and bigger and stronger and cleverer — away. He told him he never, ever wanted to see him again, and when his friend’s face filled with red hurt and he ran away, he disappeared under the covers to be alone.</p><p>The only time the boy slept was when his father came. He held onto the great, warm hand of his father like a talisman and finally sunk into dreamless sleep.</p><p>His father was his protector. The living and Dead alike revered him, and when he was close, the memories of pain gave way to the memories of rescue. But because his father was also a king, he could not stay always.</p><p>A month after the prince had first woken from the brink of Death, the king had to leave. He told the prince he would be gone five days, only, to help people who needed to get to a safe place after bad men had taken their homes.</p><p>And so the Prince did not sleep.</p><p>The longer it went, the more insistent the Dead were in their attentions.</p><p>The first day, the woman who poured his orange juice in the dining hall whispered something in a strange language. When he went to drink, his cup was empty and the woman was gone.</p><p>The second day, on the way to his stretching treatments, he smelled blood in the hallway, worse even than the night he’d almost drowned in it. Though the stench roiled his stomach until he threw up, no one else seemed to notice.</p><p>The fourth day, a pale face waited outside his window and would not go. When he shrieked and the Worried Faces came running, they could see nothing at the end of his pointing finger, and they had to take him into a hospital room before his hysterics ceased.</p><p>The fifth day, the prince reached for the glass of water at the side of his hospital bed, and a cold hand grabbed his wrist and did not let go.</p><p>“What do you want from me?” the prince asked, sobbing. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”</p><p>“The Light,” a voice rasped. “I want the Light from you.”</p><p>By the time the king, summoned home hours early, burst into the hospital room, the prince had been sedated.</p><p><em>He will not sleep,</em> they told him. <em>He sees things that are not there. </em></p><p>The king dismissed the living first, insisting he would stay with his son and call if need be.</p><p>Next, he dismissed the Dead.</p><p>“You cannot have his Light,” he said. “Pass into true death. The Light will come to all in time.”</p><p>Then, he held his son’s hand until the boy’s own fingers entwined his own.</p><p>When the boy woke in the morning and saw the king was still there, he began to cry. He told his father of the nightmares and the ghosts. Of the worried faces and the friend whose heart he’d broken.</p><p>The king was stern, then, as he often was when he knew exactly what to do.</p><p>He left and came back with three things:</p><p>First, a phone, which the boy could use to call for him without bringing the Worried Faces instead.</p><p>Second, the boy’s friend, who sat on his bed and talked and promised to bring a new comic tomorrow.</p><p>Third, a figurine of a fox-like creature with over-sized ears and a ruby horn.</p><p>With help of these three things — his father and his friend and a bit of divine intervention — the prince finally slept a dreamless sleep.</p><p>And the things that should be Dead did not bother him again for many years.</p>
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